"Hiring rent-a-cops, raising tax rates to beef up the size of the police force, moving out to gated communities in the suburbs - these are all responses to crime that give me the willies for one reason or another." - Neal Stephenson in Club Wired

"Imagine scooping up heaps of Lego blocks, but with boxing gloves on your hands. Nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves, and arrange the
fundamental building blocks of matter in exactly the way that we want." - Ralph Merkle in Club Wired

"I think practically everybody feels a little threatened. If
you're . . . in a position of power you derived from an obsolete system, you are
going to feel very threatened." - John Perry Barlow in Club Wired

How about a timepiece that ticks once a year, with a century hand that
advances every 100 years and a cuckoo that comes out on the millennium.
Question: Who keeps it wound?

". . . ten thousand years is a very short time
in the history of the universe . . . In
a way, I think it's kind of pathetic that we see it as so big." - Danny Hillis in Club Wired